Emanuela Orlandi, a fifteen-year-old Vatican City resident, vanished inexplicably on June 22, 1983. Orlandi is still missing, and the matter is still unresolved. Some have attempted to trade her for Mehmet Ali Agca, a member of the Grey Wolves who shot the Pope in 1981. There are rumors that some of the individuals who attempted to negotiate the agreement with the Vatican were Banda della Magliana members.
A 2005 phone call made anonymously was aired by Rai 3 TV’s live show Chi l’ha Visto?, a transmission titled “Who has seen it?” on the location of missing persons said that in order to resolve the Orlandi issue, it would be necessary to ascertain who is interred in Saint Apollinare church and about the favor that Enrico De Pedis had rendered to Cardinal Ugo Poletti at the time.
De Pedis’s tomb was housed in the Saint Apollinare church, which is close to Piazza Navona, until 2012. In addition, a crypt containing the remains of Christian martyrs and popes is located there. The cathedral is housed in the same complex as Orlandi’s previous school, the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music.
One of the voices from the anonymous call in February 2006 was identified as Mario, a former Banda della Magliana member and one of the assassins employed by De Pedis.
There are some strange details in De Pedis’s tomb. De Pedis was buried in the Verano cemetery after his funeral, which was held in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina (next to Piazza Colonna). However, when he got married in 1988, he told his wife Carla that he preferred to be buried in the church of Sant’Apollinare.
At the time, though, this appeared unfeasible because the only individuals allowed to be buried in the church were diocesan bishops, cardinals, and Roman pontiffs. But De Pedis would be buried in the church, and all because of a jail friendship he had developed. While De Pedis was incarcerated, Pietro Vergari, the rector of the basilica of Sant’Apollinare, met him and reported that he was a benefactor of the church.
There has long been mystery surrounding the burial of De Pedis in the church of Sant’Apollinare. There has been discussion of De Pedis doing a favor for Ugo Poletti, the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI). The “favor” was purportedly the mafia and Vatican’s intervention to recover the funds Cosa Nostra had invested in Banco Ambrosiano through Roberto Calvi, the 62-year-old banker who was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
This money was transferred through the IOR and never received back because it ended up in the Polish union “Solidarnosc”‘s coffers. It was found that four days after Vergani wrote to Poletti on March 6, 1990, requesting permission to bring the remains of the “benefactor” De Pedis, the then-President of the CEI gave his consent. De Pedis’s mortal remains were brought into the church on April 24, 1990.
Until the publication of Raffaella Notariale and Sabrina Minardi’s interview book “Criminal Secret” in 2010, no one was aware of De Pedis’s interment. The editorial team of the television program “Who Has Seen It” was then contacted, albeit anonymously, regarding Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance and its connection to De Pedis and the Banda della Magliana. In 2012, De Pedis’s remains were taken out of the church and cremated, with the ashes being dumped into the sea.